Field of the Application
The application generally relates to congestion control technology, and more particularly to Application-specific Congestion control for Data Communication (ACDC).
Description of the Related Art
With growing demand for ubiquitous computing and networking, various wireless technologies have been developed, including Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) technology, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology, Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) technology, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology, Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA-2000) technology, Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) technology, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) technology, and Time-Division LTE (TD-LTE) technology, etc.
Using LTE technology as an example, the Application-specific Congestion control for Data Communication (ACDC) was first introduced in Release 13 of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications. ACDC aims to provide a more flexible access control mechanism based on the purpose of the UE's access attempt. Basically, ACDC groups applications in categories of importance, and it applies access controls to lesser categories first, sparing more important applications (e.g., for emergency purposes) from denial or deferral of access until and unless the level of congestion is severe enough that they must also be affected.
In a practice of the ACDC mechanism, the access controls are applied at the network side. It is proposed to associate the communications of emergent applications with a particular Access Point Name (APN) which only provides emergency services, and when ACDC is enabled, the network only allows the communications associated with this particular APN. Even though some other applications may fake the association with the particular APN and have their access attempts sent out to the network, their access attempts will eventually fail at the network side since the particular APN does not provide normal services. However, this design cannot prevent such access attempts from being sent out to the network, causing radio resources of the network to be wastefully occupied, especially when there are many User Equipment (UE) doing so.